In a challenging economy, marketing teams are increasingly being asked by company management to quantify their efforts. Companies are looking for BIGGER AND BETTER response rates from the marketing channels they’re using.

Because campaigns must now work harder than ever, marketing teams are being asked to track and measure each campaign’s effectiveness. Management wants to know how many people are really seeing and acting upon the marketing team’s efforts.

Digital marketing is easy to track, but traditional media channels are still needed to generate other touches with prospective customers. That’s where PURLs come in.

Personalized URLs (PURLs) are a method for connecting offline marketing
with online tracking and measurement.

What Is the Power of Personalization?

PURLs typically combine the direct mail recipient’s first name and last name into a specialized web address. For example John Doe gets a postcard that asks him to log on to www.JohnDoe.xyz.com. Not only is the postcard personalized — using variable data printing — but John’s entire online experience (assuming he visits that PURL) is personalized.

By migrating the customer’s offline experience over to the web, the recipient can receive more relevant and more personalized content. Thus, response rates are substantially higher.

Why Should Everything Point to the Web?

Direct mail has been successful in integrating with the web using PURLs. But, really, all offline media can be pointed to the web, where it can then be tracked. Sophisticated web dashboards allow marketers to see the results of integrated offline and online marketing efforts in real time.

So if you use traditional offline media channels, you may wish to entice your readers to go online to a PURL, where you can collect the requested tracking and measuring data that upper management is asking for.